Castlevania Order of Ecclesia was released by Konami in 2008.
For hundreds of years the Belmont's fought Dracula while others succumed to the darkness, the others started forming organizations to try and come up with ways to combat the darkness. One such organization was the Order of Ecclesia which through the Dominus glyph, Barlowe has found a way to destroy Dracula. While preparing the rite for Shanoa to gain the ultimate power to destroy Dracula, another student of Barlowe's, Albus, steals the books holding Dominus glyph and is the cause of Shanoa's loss of memory. Barlowe explains what happened to Shanoa, is retrained, and then explained that she needs to find Albus and return Dominus in order for them to defeat Dracula.
For a fourth time in a row since Aria of Sorrow, your skills are made up from random drops. The glyph system is similar to the past systems, where now only certain enemies have skills that can be acquired by Shanoa. This time around, you don't acquire weapon drops or purchase weapon, only glyphs which are either weapons or spells. There are a few different weapons glyphs, each upgraded later in the game with a more powerful version of that same weapon. There are also different levels of magic spells with multiple elements, some spells which can only be acquired by bosses, one of which can cause pretty severe lag and is the only time within the game that you'll experience such. Just like any past game using the style of random drop system, the drops are uncommon or rare, you may get the item your first few times killing an enemy, it may also take 100. Not all enemies drop a glyph though, which is recognizable by the blue or red animation after the enemies death. The magic glyphs are the easiest to learn though as if there's a blue and white animation when the monster is casting a spell, you can absorb the spell without it being cast in order to learn the glyph.
I really don't like the glyph system as they make the game an unenjoyable button masher. Glyphs can be placed on X, Y, and R. X and Y are your attack glyphs. Having two of the same glyph will allow your character to quickly attack with that glyph back and forth and then you can backdash to cancel out whatever attack. Magic spells might range from two to four spells on screen at once depending on the spell. There's the glyph unite which is up and attack which combines both glyphs to do a unique special that takes off a bit more damage for a certain amount of hearts. Hearts do nothing else in the game other than the glyph unite and you'll more than likely never use them except on bosses or to quickly defeat harder enemies.
Enemies in the game have multiple strengths so only a specific type of attack will hurt enemies now. So forget about the amount of damage your weapon does, more than likely that won't mean anything. Sometimes your hammer won't do any damage, other times your sword won't, etc. You're constantly having to switch between different glyphs to do damage to the enemies. You get three sets after you reach a certain part in the game to quick swap between, it's just an annoyance. This extends to bosses as most bosses in the game will kill you in four to six hits, maybe less, and unless you use their one specific attack weakness, even when you use their weakness actually, you'll spend up to five to ten minutes taking off hundreds to thousands of damage before the boss goes down.
So like I was explaining above, bosses are back to the Circle of the Moon style damage sponges, except where you have four hits before you're dead, they have thousands(end game.) So you can spend five minutes in combat and then screw up a few times only having to go through it all over again. Most boss battles in this game are also nothing but trial and error bs. Where your character stands in literally one spot and if the boss uses a certain set of attacks you'll get damaged by not sitting in one spot. This is similar to a shmup. You have to be in the right location the exact momement the boss makes his subtle motion that he's going to attack, and if you're not in that exact location before that subtle motion ends, you might get hit one, two, three, or five times in a row(one boss has a good chance to hit you five times if he hits you the first time,) however many attacks in a row will hit you. So with the amount of damage you'll receive after receiving one hit, you mostly have to play a near perfect round against the boss with the proper glyph set up in order to kill them. So in five minutes or so, how many times do you think you're going to screw up on accident? Oh, and that trial and error bs only lasts for the first half or third of the boss fight. Most bosses change up what they do when they lose a certain amount of HP, some even switch it up a third time doing something different.
You have the ability to change equipment, but by the time you get to the end of the game, you might have changed to three different pieces of armor, one or two helments, etc. They should have just removed equipment and leveling altogether and then balance the game a bit better. The accessories are mostly useless and make marginal changes to your defense and attack except for the Death Ring and in my opinion with the way the game plays, they should have started the player off with the Death Ring because even though you die in one hit, atleast you take off double damage for the massive amount of HP you'll be going through on these bosses. But no. You get it at the very end of the game, right before the second to last boss.
The game looks beautiful. It's 2D mostly with very slight 3D here and there, but the 3D backgrounds and everything just looks amazing. There's really not much in the way of exploration though. They made this similar to Castlevania 2 in appearance where your character will cross through forests, swamps, across oceans, etc, but there's really a lack of exploration. Sure you can go back to areas and areas cut off here and there, but the game really feels like you're dead set on going from point a to b until much later in the game where you can actually go back to these parts you missed. The very last area you go through is literally point a to b all the way through and while there are shortcuts, it's not until you get to the other side and step on a switch or push a button to remove the wall, so back to a place you've already been, or continue on to point b.
After completing the game it unlocks boss rush, allows you to play through the game as Albus, a hard mode with a max level 50 option and a max level 1 option. The hard mode has different enemy arrangement as well as increased damage and HP of enemies.
I didn't like Castlevania Order of Ecclesia the first time I played through it and I still don't. The storyline is great, but when it's mostly gameplay and the story is bits and pieces here and there, that barely does anything to salvage my interest in this garbage game. You'd think the next game in the series couldn't get any worse, but it does. Castlevania Harmony of Despair is even worse. I will not review that pos.
Gameplay - 4
Design - 4
Presentation - 5
Balance - 3
Overall - 4
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Scoring system.
1-3 - bad
4 - 5 below average
5.5 - average
6 - 10 - good to excellent
The kuporeview inflation score. What the score would be if the average game was 7/10 like IGN, Gamespot, etc. Since I don't inflate scores and my scores are underrated compared to what people come to expect I came up with an equation to inflate my scores to make them similar to others. http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=177193&page=1#1
